MOVIE REVIEW: Movie goers will find 'Silence' a test of faith

Friday

Jan 6, 2017 at 6:30 AM

Martin Scorsese's long-percolating religious epic, “Silence,” tells an old but relevant story. It's just too bad we need to get there through a confounding two-plus hours of the director working through his own religious issues.

By Dana Barbuto/The Patriot Ledger

Much is confessed in Martin Scorsese’s long-percolating religious epic, “Silence.” So in that spirit I offer this disclosure: I found his movie devoutly dull, indulgent, muddled and surprisingly predictable. Not what I expected from a director this legendary.

By the film’s end it is clear Scorsese believes in hope and renewal. That’s a positive message to send in our uncertain times. But it’s getting to that end that is the challenge. “Silence’ is a test of faith and patience for its protagonists as much as it is for moviegoers. Yet there are rewards.

In adapting Shusaku Endo’s acclaimed 1966 novel about Portuguese Jesuit missionaries persecuted in 17th century Japan, Scorsese tells an old but relevant story that we can learn from immensely. It’s just too bad we need to get there by slogging through a confounding two hours and 45 minutes of the director working through his own religious issues and Catholic upbringing.

With “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Kundun,” Scorsese is no stranger to meditations on faith, spirituality, guilt and redemption. In “Silence,” he kicks it up a notch, asking: Is God hearing the cries and prayers of His believers, or are we praying to no one? How else can you explain all the suffering in the world? Indeed, Scorsese wrestles with this doubt, but offers no answers. It’s provocative thematically in that he’s not buying everything Catholicism is selling.

His conduits are Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, playing a pair of Christian missionaries who put their fealty to God under fire as they search rural Japan for their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) during a time when Christianity was outlawed and their presence forbidden. It was a dangerous time of religious intolerance (sound familiar?). The priests can only travel at night and they take shelter with an underground group of Japanese Christians.

In the beautifully shot and evocative opening, Scorsese turns his camera on a vast Japanese mountainside shrouded in mist. As the image clears, men – dead or near dead – hang from crosses, beaten and tortured for being the wrong religion. It might be the early 1600s but that kind of closed-minded thinking mirrors our contemporary times.

Casting problems are evident from the get-go, as Scorsese relies too heavily on Garfield’s voice-over to reveal his character’s thoughts and confused conscience. The actor, who was terrific this past fall as an aw-shucks soldier in “Hacksaw Ridge,” is miscast in what’s essentially the lead role (a part, no doubt Scorsese favorite Leonardo DiCaprio would have played in his younger days). Garfield is simply too adorable and lightweight – literally and figuratively, as both he and Driver look emaciated – to be believable as a tortured man of the cloth. The accents are terrible, too. Driver, the stronger of the two actors, might have been a better fit for the part.

The script, which Scorsese wrote with his “Gangs of New York” scribe Jay Cocks, is also problematic. At one point, it separates Driver’s Father Garrpe from Garfield’s Father Rodrigues for a long stretch, leaving an already sluggish film resting squarely on Garfield’s skinny shoulders as his character moves to the forefront. In support, Issei Ogata delivers an Oscar-worthy turn as the despicable Inquisitor, equally menacing and condescending to those who won’t “apostatize.” Tadanobu Asano is also memorable for his part as the priests’ translator and guide.

“Silence” is far from golden, but since it is Scorsese, the movie merits a look – just don’t say I didn’t warn you.